You Mer, I Love You
by ficsofgreys
Summary: One shot "I Love You". I might post more one shots and I actually have chapters of a story written... Let me know if you'd read.


Meredith walked into the empty Attendings lounge after a long day, she was exhausted and way past the point of being hungry. Taking off her lab coat and draping it on the back of the sofa she wandered over to the bathroom. She pushed the door open and soon realised there was someone in there behind it, vaguely seeing a flash of navy blue scrubs.

"Oh sorry, I didn't realize it was occupied." She awkwardly apologized, shutting the door and wandering over to sit on the sofa.

A few seconds later the handle moved and the door opened a matter of inches. "Mer, is that you?" A voice called out from in there.

"Nathan?" Meredith got up from the sofa and slowly peered around the door. He was sitting on the floor leaning against the wall, head in his hands. He didn't make eye contact with her but was aware of her presence. "You okay?" She asked, stepping in there to sit beside him. He shrugged his shoulders.

"Patient?" She asked. It was always hard when a patient had a bad outcome, it was the absolute worst part of the job.

"Yeah." Nathan nodded, looking up at Meredith for the first time. His face riddled with sadness.

"You wanna talk about it?" She moved closer to him and grabbed his hand from his knee to which he was grateful for.

"I was paged to the ER, car crash. This Mom _Hannah,_ maybe 25-ish and her baby, Evie. Her face was badly cut but she was more bothered about the baby getting checked out which is understandable." Meredith nodded in agreement.

"We paged Robbins and she came, made sure everything was alright with Evie as I stitched Hannah's wounds and saw to her. I checked her chest and stomach for internal injuries, even got Pierce to double check seeing as she was just next door. She agreed everything was alright." Nathan paused for a second, looking at Meredith who reassuringly smiled at him.

"So her husband turns up, obviously worried sick about them and sits with them for a while whilst they're both being monitored. The baby was starting to cry with being hungry so Hannah started to feed her, we gave her some privacy and the baby fell asleep in her arms."

"She got thirsty so the husband went to get her some tea, she's smiling and telling him that she loveI s him as he left.. Next thing I know she's in cardiac arrest holding her 5 month old child." He gripped Meredith's hand a little tighter.

"Oh Nathan, I'm sorry." She leaned her head on his shoulder.

"We tried to resuscitate her, cracked her chest right there in the ER to massage her heart. Nothing." He looked Meredith right in her eyes. "I tried Mer, really tried."

"I know you did."

"The the husband came back not 5 minutes later to his dead wife and the little baby has no Mother." He breathed, sadness in his voice.

They sat there on the bathroom floor in silence for a while longer, Meredith still leaning into him closely.

Nathan inhaled deeply and gathered his thoughts. "Mer, I..."

"Talk to me." She spoke softly. This wasn't the Nathan who was flirting with her, messing around, making her laugh, jumping her in the parking lot. This was serious.

"I wanted to say something and it's been going around my head for far too long but after this today... so many people loose their families and loved ones and don't ever get to hear them say it again." Meredith's puzzled face stared back at him.

"I love you." He faintly smiled at her, his gaze never leaving hers. " _You_ , Mer. I love you. I need you to know that" He said it a lot louder than the first time.

"Nathan..." She shuffled opposite him and softly raised her hand to his face.

"Let me say this." He abruptly followed on with his sentence before she had a chance to say anything else. "I don't want you to freak out and I'm certainly not expecting you to say it back. Hell, I realized a long time ago that life is too short and there's so much loss in this world, you gotta tell people when you love them." He had no idea what was going on in Meredith's mind in that mom ent, he often didn't. "So yeah, I love you."

Meredith didn't move for what seemed like minutes, in reality it was only a few seconds. In fact, Nathan wasn't entirety convinced she was even breathing.

She bit down on her lip, her wide eyes scanning his face. He was waiting for her to respond. All of a sudden Meredith began to smirk, followed by a soft chuckle. He loved her laugh.

Nathan shook his head at her, a shy grin laced his face. "Please don't say you're laughing at me."

"You were worried I'd freak out?" Meredith questioned. She stood up, reaching her hand out for his to pull him up.

"I mean, yeah... After everything."

"Nathan." She looked at him and hesitated to continue, but she did. "You... You taught me that it's okay... It's okay to live my life, to enjoy things I never thought I'd ever enjoy again. You make me smile, and I don't even smile that often." They both began to snigger at that, it was very true. Meredith was a hard nut to crack.

"You're a pain in the ass." She admitted, Nathan raised his eyebrows at her.

"But I have a nice ass." He defended.

"You do."

Meredith closed the distance between them and wrapped her arms around his neck, he immediately responded and hugged her tightly right back. She felt peace which she'd never felt before, knowing that he loved her.

 _She loved him._

She looked up at him, still pressed against his warm torso. "I love you."

Nathan smiled down at her, he knew she was saying that from the heart and not just because he had said it first.

"I'm gonna kiss you now." He tilted her chin with his fingers and crashed his soft lips onto hers almost immediately. Meredith closed her eyes and leaned in deeply so that their foreheads were touching. She began to run her fingers through his hair, it was a little flat from his scrub cap anyway. He intensified the kiss by invading her mouth with his tongue, slowly, lustfully. She was all he needed in that very moment, the woman he loved.


End file.
